AWS Cron Every 5 Minutes

In AWS EventBridge (CloudWatch Events), the cron expression for every 5 minutes is cron(*/5 * * * ? *). Note two key differences from standard cron: AWS uses 6 fields (adding a year field), and requires ? in either day-of-month or day-of-week to indicate "no specific value."

The ? is mandatory in AWS cron — you must use it in day-of-month or day-of-week (but not both). For a simple every-5-minutes schedule, day-of-week gets the ? since we don't care about specific days. The year field * means every year.

AWS also supports rate expressions as an alternative: rate(5 minutes) is simpler than the cron syntax for basic intervals. Use rate expressions for simple frequencies and cron expressions for complex schedules (specific days, times, or combinations).